An Investigation into Students’ Perceptions on the use of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in EFL Classes

Abstract

Language is a tool for communication between two people or among the people. English is a global language and it is used as a common language in some countries and as an official language in some countries. English is used as a medium of language in classes of some countries in which English is still used as a foreign language. There are two previous papers in which the respective researchers studied the drawbacks and benefits of using English as the medium of language. Based on these studies, the researcher studied the perceptions of the students on the use of using English as a medium of instruction in EFL classes. The title of this research is “An Investigation into Students’ Perceptions on the Use of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in EFL Classes”. The main purpose of doing this research is to reveal benefits and drawbacks of using English as a medium of instruction in EFL classes. It took a semester. The researcher used a sampling method. Thirty first year English major specialization students, fifteen first year Economics major specialization students and fifty-eight second year Physics major specialization students were used as the participants in this research. As the research tools, some questionnaires were used. Data were collected and analyzed by using quantitative and qualitative ways. As the findings, nearly all participants became developed in listening and speaking skills more than before, more confident in communicating with others by using English and enjoyed in using English as EMI in classes as well as had the great demand in EMI in future English classes as the benefits though there were a few drawbacks. In brief, all findings and results will be supportive for further researches related to EMI.